“According to our Smart Pen Archives, Apple has now filed more than a dozen smart pen patent applications over the last few years with each one getting more innovative and detailed,” Jack Purcher reports for Patently Apple.

“One of the most advanced patent applications on smart pens to date was published this past April and one of two patent applications on this subject published today illustrates that Apple is really trying to find a smart pen solution that could also work with ordinary paper,” Purcher reports. “Students and professional doodlers alike could work on ordinary paper and/or notebooks and then simply transfer their data to the device of their choosing when they’re done.”

Purcher reports, “Other equally innovative ideas that surfaced today include a unique heating element that provides the iPen’s tip with smooth action on the display in any temperature and even an integrated iPen dock to charge the Pen’s battery.”

Go to your oven and heat a sausage. Next, apply sausage to iPad screen. Works the same as a heated stylus. Try it out on your husband’s Toshiba first to see if it stains the screen much. There’s so much Windows crap on the Tosh that he won’t notice another layer of streaks on top.

I’m a confessed doodler and would welcome this with open arms. I was looking at Live Scribe and this seems to be very close. I may hang on a bit to see where this goes. Apple has a nice portfolio of pen patents and as Apple pushes into the enterprise and retail, a smart pen is going to be the weapon to win these markets. Go for it Apple!

I think that Apple is now selling enough iOS devices to justify supporting them with new peripherals or tools. It’s only natural. I’m sure that 20% of iphone / ipad users would be interesting in a smart pen especially because you could use it in the winter with the heated pen. When you’re the leader like Apple is, then you could do stuff like this and make a good buck at it. It’s about the numbers.

I guess tthat you can’t read. Apple’s patent is about iOS devices using the ipen. Yes, some applications will work with paper while others work on the display of an iOS device. There’s one pen tip option so that the user could switch between writing on a display and paper.